Search warrant in hand, a team of city inspectors Friday morning descended on the MacArthur Park Apartments, one of Springfield’s largest and most troubled housing complexes. The team, which also included members of the police, fire and legal departments, spent 3 1/2 hours inspecting seven four-unit buildings that were mostly vacant. Within the first hour alone, inspectors placarded at least six units as “unsafe and dangerous.” The magnitude of the violations was unclear Friday. The city said a final count of what was found won’t be available until next week.
Ward 7 Ald. Joe McMenamin has been working on getting inspectors into the complex in the 2700 block of South MacArthur Boulevard for two months. He said conditions in MacArthur Park demonstrate “deplorable lack of investment and management by the owner” and “historical and ongoing neglect and disregard for city code.”
‘Intolerable conditions’
McMenamin said the goal of Friday’s inspection was to assess the extent of the violations. “If this property owner fails to make progress, I’m sure our legal department will bring this property owner to his knees,” McMenamin said. “These conditions are intolerable.”
City denied access
Bill Logan, executive assistant to Mayor Mike Houston, said Friday the city was denied access to the apartments two weeks ago. Officials decided to seek a court order because of the property’s history and the “nature of the problems we feared existed.” “It’s a new day,” Logan said. “We won’t continue to tolerate owners and landlords to have property go without doing due diligence … We won’t stand by and let it happen.”
Before going in Friday morning, the team of about a dozen city officials met in the parking lot of nearby Fritz’s Wagon Wheel Restaurant. There, Mark Cullen, the city’s new corporation counsel, outlined the plan: Inspect only vacant units. No knocking down doors. Take photographs and nothing else. One by one, the caravan of vehicles entered the 188-unit complex. Once inside, inspectors went looking for code violations at seven pre-selected buildings.
Garbage, holes in walls
Several of the doors stood open, unable to be closed for various reasons, including missing doorknobs. Inside some of the units were piles of garbage, discarded furniture, bottles, cigarette butts, broken glass, holes in the walls and loose electrical wires. In one unit, a section of floorboards was missing, exposing the crawlspace. Graffiti was sprayed on at least two of the red brick buildings — one was an expletive; the other read “This is are (sic) house.” In the affidavit for the search warrant, the neighborhood police officer, Gerry Castles, said he’d also found dead animals and human feces on the property.
McMenamin, who is in his first term as an alderman, said the complex’s conditions hurt the surrounding neighborhoods, too. A nearly 100-page report assessing MacArthur Boulevard by The Lakota Group took note of the apartment complex as having a “detrimental effect” on the corridor, including property conditions, safety and crime issues.
Read the full story, including the history of the complex, at SJ-R.com…
Joe McMenamin for Ward 7 